Monday, January 4, 2016

cheat allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line. It was designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember.

cheat depends only on python and pip.

ExampleThe next time you're forced to disarm a nuclear weapon without consulting Google, you may run:

cheat tar

You will be presented with a cheatsheet resembling:

# To extract an uncompressed archive: tar -xvf /path/to/foo.tar

# To extract a .gz archive:tar -xzvf /path/to/foo.tgz

# To create a .gz archive:tar -czvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/

# To extract a .bz2 archive:tar -xjvf /path/to/foo.tgz

# To create a .bz2 archive:tar -cjvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/

To see what cheatsheets are availble, run cheat -l.Note that, while cheat was designed primarily for *nix system administrators, it is agnostic as to what content it stores. If you would like to use cheatto store notes on your favorite cookie recipes, feel free.

Installing

Using pip

sudo pip install cheat

Using homebrew

brew install cheat

ManuallyFirst install the required python dependencies with:

sudo pip install docopt pygments

Then, clone this repository, cd into it, and run:

sudo python setup.py install

Modifying Cheatsheets

The value of cheat is that it allows you to create your own cheatsheets - the defaults are meant to serve only as a starting point, and can and should be modified.

Cheatsheets are stored in the~/.cheat/directory, and are named on a per-keyphrase basis. In other words, the content for the tar cheatsheet lives in the ~/.cheat/tar file.

Provided that you have an EDITOR environment variable set, you may edit cheatsheets with:

cheat -e foo

If the 'foo' cheatsheet already exists, it will be opened for editing. Otherwise, it will be created automatically.

After you've customized your cheatsheets, I urge you to track~/.cheat/ along with your dotfiles.